Scott Morton, Ph.D. was an Adjunct Professor of Computational & Applied Mathematics at Rice University and a dedicated committee member for the Energy High Performance Computing Conference hosted by the Ken Kennedy Institute. Scott was one of six founders for the conference, formerly named the Rice Oil & Gas High Performance Computing Conference. He continued to serve as a speaker, planner, and friend on the committee until his passing.
Scott graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota with a BS in physics and mathematics in 1981, and he earned his Ph.D. in astrophysics 10 years later from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His first job after graduate school was in research and development in seismic imaging at Shell in Houston, Texas. Scott then spent the next 7 years distributed between Shell, Thinking Machines, Cray Research and SGI, gaining expertise in both geophysics and computational science as well as earning an R&D 100 award. In 1998, Scott returned to Houston to start working for Hess Corporation where he spent the next 19 years, helping build one of the first Linux PC clusters used for seismic imaging, spearheading the petroleum industry’s effort at doing seismic imaging on GPU (graphics processing unit) clusters, and managing the Geophysical Technology Development group in Hess Corporation’s Global E&P Technology department.
Throughout his career he was known as a great colleague and a world-class scientist. Scott's knowledge of mathematics, physics, computer science, and engineering, coupled with his R&D and technical computing experience, made him a respected professional in both the global seismic community and the high performance computing (HPC) community.
Scott was a warm energetic person with an enthusiasm for life. He loved to be in nature; camping, canoeing, hiking and scuba diving. He had a hobby of challenge square dancing with his wife and good friends, traveling all across the US and even attended dances internationally in Japan, Germany, and the Czech Republic. Scott loved travel, good food, and meeting new people.
Scott passed away in August of 2022 at his home in Pearland, Texas after a yearlong battle with prostate cancer. He is survived by his wife, Cathleen; children, Jennalynn and Travis; parents, Doug (Marge) Morton and Kathy (Len) Demmon; brothers, Jeff (Julie), Gregg (Tania) and Bradd and numerous nieces, nephews and cousins.
